Alternatives to War by Colonel Dan Smith, USA (Ret.)

Organizing for Peace: January 1, 2004

"What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war....I am talking of a genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living....Not merely peace for Americans; but peace for all men and women; not merely peace in our times, but peace for all time."

~ John F. Kennedy, American University speech, June 10, 1963

Introduction

Last year's "Organizing For Peace" described the general institutional components on which the international community relies when there is a requirement for a "peace operation." In those instances when military forces are not required, the United Nations Secretary-General may dispatch personal representatives or create "offices" or missions to advise and promote good governance and national or regional stability. Such work is the essence of the peaceful prevention of deadly conflict.

In the aftermath of armed conflict the United Nations (UN), through action by the Security Council, can deploy "blue helmets" led by an experienced military commander to perform one of two missions:

(1) If authorized under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, the force may simply monitor or assist, as required, formerly warring parties as they move along a diplomatic spectrum from implementing and observing the cessation of fighting to either a new governmental structure (following a civil war) or a new diplomatic relationship (following cross-border conflict).

(2) If fighting is still occurring but the Security Council decides that "extraordinary" circumstances warrant intervention by the international community (e.g., to halt massacres of noncombatants, to get critical relief supplies to refugees), it may invoke Chapter VII of the Charter to initiate a peace-making or peace enforcement operation in which the rules of engagement permit greater latitude to the intervening troops to employ force to achieve their mandate.

Also described last year is the important "second layer," the various regional organizations that either have been formed for security reasons (e.g., NATO) or have assumed a security dimension because of perceived threats to one or more of their members, sometimes from another member state or from internal unrest within a state. Where security is an "add-on" function, the mechanisms (if any) for restoring peace tend to be ad hoc structures. Such efforts, particularly if the Security Council endorses them, provide a valuable alternative when the UN cannot itself agree to intervene.

Ad Hoc Interventions

Very recently, a third level of "intervening for peace" has emerged. It arises from (and therefore is difficult to separate from) armed interventions to compel another country or group to capitulate to the wishes or interests of the intervening country, whether these are overtly self-aggrandizing (Panama 1989, Iraq 2003) or more benevolent (Lebanon 1983). Some of these more altruistic interventions are multinational, but many seem to be unilateral. In West Africa, for example, Britain intervened in Sierra Leone to bolster the government and quell the rampages of the Liberian-supported Revolutionary United Front (RUF). In so doing, London clearly took sides in the struggle, which the UN "blue helmets" could not do and still discharge London's mandate. Britain forces and the UN "blue helmets" in Sierra Leone with their different forces with their different reporting chains and missions, inevitable creates tensions, but these tensions were controlled by a "division of labor" worked out on the ground.

France has a long history of intervening in Francophone Africa, propping up faltering governments, and occasionally undermining a ruler. Most recently, the French Interim Emergency Multinational Force intervened in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo to try to stop ethnic-based massacres and in Cote d'Ivoire to damp down residual violence in the aftermath of an attempted coup in September 2002. With a ceasefire and a program for general government reform (Linas-Marcoussis Accord) in place in January 2003, French peacekeepers were joined by an African force from the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). The two forces, as in Sierra Leone, operate independently but cooperate. On February 4, 2003, the UN Security Council authorized continued deployment of both the French and ECOMOG contingents under Resolution 1464 (2003), but significantly this action did not create a "blue helmet" operation. In May, the Council authorized a UN mission of unarmed observers to assist in the reconciliation process.

In neighboring Liberia, where president-warlord Charles Taylor's regime was under severe pressure from insurgents, another dual peacekeeping intervention occurred, this time involving ECOMOG and 200 U.S. Marines from an off-shore Amphibious Ready Group. In August, Taylor left Liberia and a new interim government was sworn in. By early October, the small U.S. contingent had withdrawn as troops from the UN Mission in Sierra Leone started arriving to form, with ECOMOG, a new UN military-police mission in Liberia that may grow to 17,000.

Some welcome this growing pattern of ad hoc unilateral intervention "for peace" as a form of conflict mitigation or prevention of a greater evil, particularly when the intervention ends civil war and the atrocities so often associated with civil strife. It is true that such interventions often can be mounted more rapidly than if undertaken by established institutions like the UN or even regional peace and security organizations, and thus act as a brake on the downward spiral into chaos. It is also true that in the post-intervention period, the intervening country pressures the relevant formal international security organ to assume responsibility for the intervention by "authorizing" it; raising and inserting its own "peacekeeping" forces; accepting the financial burden of the operation; and, if conflict had already started before the original intervention, conducting post-conflict reconstruction and nation-building activities.

This latter point highlights a major weakness of the ad hoc approach, for formal organizations may be reluctant (and may flatly refuse) to take on peacekeeping, peace building, and reconstitution phases, particularly if doing so would impart the appearance of legitimizing the original military intervention. The upshot, should this happen, is either a failed state on the order of Somalia if the intervening power leaves, creating a power vacuum; a dependent state such as Iraq will be beginning July 1, 2004; or--at the extreme--an occupied state such as Iraq is now with all the legal responsibilities that status imposes on the original intervening power(s).

Another major weakness of the ad hoc approach is that it usually comes into play in a post-violence milieu. While formal organizations often are also guilty of not intervening in time to prevent armed conflict, they at least have the potential to be involved through preventive and non-violent means to keep tensions from spiraling out of control.

A way out of the ad hoc reactive quandary may be the creation of a small, modular, highly mobile crisis action team of diplomats, legal experts, police trainers, transportation and logistics specialists, construction engineers, humanitarian aid providers, and refugee workers, complemented by a well-trained and suitably armed "on-call" rapid reaction military security unit. As a threat to peace begins to evolve, an appropriately skilled and sized crisis action unit could be pulled together and dispatched to the trouble area not for warfighting but to prevent the start of armed conflict. The authority to initiate an intervention would have to reside in an organization's executive to ensure timely response, but the criteria for initiating intervention should be developed and approved by the member states.

Of course, there is no single initial deployment package that will fit every circumstance. Moreover, as conditions change, whether before or after the intervention begins, adjustments to the skill set mixture will be required. One critical rule that applies to any intervention is to have enough personnel and technological capabilities to project a sense that the organization is serious in its resolve to prevent deterioration (or any further deterioration) in the security sphere.

Whether the ad hoc approach to peace and security gains favor may well depend on how sincerely and extensively the leading developed countries continue to participate in institutional security and peace organizations or, where there is no reason, at least voice support for these organizations. The U.S. is planning to propose an international constabulary force that will be independent of the UN (Boston Globe, December 26, 2003). Whether allies will respond is questionable, particularly since such a force might become captive to U.S. unilateral or near-unilateral decisions for war.

What follows is a review of how the world organizes for peace. It shows UN peace activities and missions and a number of regional organizations that have in their charter a "peace and security" function.

The United Nations

There have been 56 United Nations mandated peace, humanitarian, and observer missions from June 1948 through January 1, 2004. Thirty-five of these were initiated during the 1990s and three--the UN Mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia (UNMEE), the UN Mission in Support of East Timor (UNMISET), and the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL)--since the start of 2000, the latter in September 2003.

As of January 1, 2004, 13 "blue helmet" missions still exist. With the full deployment of the 15,000-member Liberian stabilization force, the total number of UN peacekeepers will be just under 50,000, the biggest total since the early 1990s and an increase of some 6,000 from the same period in 2003. Actual deployed strength at the start of the year stands at 45,815 troops, military observers, and civilian police from 91 countries. They are supported by 3,241 international civilians and 6,497 local civilians. The U.S. contribution is 518 spread to seven missions-494 civilian police, 22 military observers, and two "troops" with the new Liberia peacekeeping mission. In addition, there are 12 political and peace building missions. Many observers expect that 2004 will see three new peacekeeping deployments, all in Africa: Sudan, Cote d'Ivoire, and Burundi.

These numbers do not include the 7,000 (down from 12,000) members of the Bosnia Stabilization Force (SFOR) from 29 nations (3,300 U.S.), the 17,000 in the Kosovo Force (KFOR) from 37 nations (4,000 U.S.), the nearly 1,900 (865 U.S.) in the Sinai Multinational Force and Observers, or the 5,500 in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan (no U.S.). Nor does it include the 11,000 (9,000 U.S.) international troops fighting in Afghanistan or the 150,000 in Iraq and Kuwait.

In June 2003, the cost of the then eleven UN missions funded through assessments for peacekeeping during the period July 1, 2003-June 30, 2004 was estimated at $2.17 billion, down from the previous year's $2.63 billion. The two missions that started in the 1940s, the UN Truce Supervision Organization and the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan are funded from the regular UN budget (combined cost of $35.1 million). In December, an additional $647 million was added to the peacekeeping total, chiefly for the Liberia mission ($565.5 million).

Costs from the first mission, begun in 1948, to date for the 56 missions is about $28.7 billion. (Compare this total cost to the $66 billion spent just for the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the $165 billion allocated through December, 2003 for Operation Iraqi Freedom and the subsequent occupation.) At the end of 2003, unpaid peacekeeping assessments stood at about $1.2 billion.

The chart portrays the number of UN missions at the end of each year since 1989. The table lists the 13 ongoing UN peacekeeping operations as of January 1, 2004.

Figure I: UN Peacekeeping Operations

Table I: Current Peacekeeping Missions

Source: United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations

UNMOVIC
In December 1999, the Security Council also mandated a new Iraqi inspection regime, the Iraq Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), to resume the work of the UN Special Commission in searching for weapons of mass destruction. Not until November 2002, did Iraq allow the first inspectors back into the country. Iraq ceased its active resistance to new inspections in the wake of Security Council Resolution 1441, passed in November 2002, which threatened dire consequences for continued Iraqi defiance. The approaching U.S.-led invasion forced UNMOVIC out of Iraq in March, and the U.S. has not assented to its return. In late 2003, France and the UK suggested the Commission be transformed into a permanent inspection agency, an idea not well received in Washington.

Other UN Missions
In addition to the 13 peacekeeping missions, the UN maintains 12 political and peace building missions for nine countries and three regional offices staffed by 525 military advisors, civilian police, and international civilians. Eight of these 12 missions are in Africa, three in Asia-Pacific, and one each in Central America and the Middle East. Beyond these 25 missions, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed 57 "special and personal representatives or envoys" (nine are U.S. citizens). Nineteen--exactly one-third--f these personal envoys deal with Africa. Six countries in Africa's Great Lakes region are working with the Secretary-General's Special Representative for the Great Lakes Region and the African Union to confer during 2004 on peace and development of the area.

Regional Options
Many regional organizations have security functions. Most promote confidence building measures such as transparency in arms production and stockpiles, controlling arms flows into their areas, and requiring members to announce military exercises. A few have mechanisms to help diffuse or resolve disputes: monitors, assistance groups, conflict resolution conferences, and--as a last resort--ad hoc military commands to suppress fighting.

This table lists major regional organizations that have evolved some (often minimal) security functions in addition to their original purposes. Note that NATO and its extended program, Partnership for Peace, are not included. This is because NATO was formed for the sole purpose of warfare to resist any invasion of Western Europe by the then Soviet Union. Also not included is the tripartite "anti-terror axis" formed at the end of 2003 by Sudan, Ethiopia, and Yemen, as this "treaty," ostensibly to promote political, economic, and security cooperation, seems to be aimed as much against Eritrea as against terrorists.

Table II: Regional Security Organizations

Sources: United Nations, Reuters, Organization web pages

This analysis was prepared by Col. Dan Smith, U.S. Army (Ret.). Dan, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, is FCNL's Senior Fellow on Military Affairs.

Reviewed: 08/26/2005

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